Closed-form formulas vs. PDE based numerical solution for the FRAP data processing: Theoretical and practical comparison

摘要

Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) is a widely used method to analyze (usually using fluorescence microscopy) the mobility of either fluorescently tagged or autofluorescent (e.g., photosynthetic) proteins in living cells. The FRAP method resides in imaging the recovery of fluorescence intensity over time in a region of interest previously bleached by a high-intensity laser pulse. While the basic principles of FRAP are simple and the experimental setup is usually fixed, quantitative FRAP data analysis is not well developed. Different models and numerical procedures are used for the underlying model parameter estimation without knowledge of how robust the methods are, i.e., the parameter inference step is not currently well established.